Data compression is the compacting of info by reducing the number of bits which are stored or transmitted. This way, the compressed data requires considerably less disk space than the original one, so a lot more content could be stored on identical amount of space. There are many different compression algorithms that function in different ways and with a lot of them just the redundant bits are removed, so once the data is uncompressed, there is no decrease in quality. Others remove unnecessary bits, but uncompressing the data following that will result in lower quality compared to the original. Compressing and uncompressing content takes a significant amount of system resources, in particular CPU processing time, so every Internet hosting platform that employs compression in real time needs to have ample power to support this attribute. An example how data can be compressed is to replace a binary code such as 111111 with 6x1 i.e. "remembering" how many consecutive 1s or 0s there should be instead of saving the entire code.

Data Compression in Shared Hosting

The compression algorithm employed by the ZFS file system that runs on our cloud hosting platform is known as LZ4. It can upgrade the performance of any Internet site hosted in a shared hosting account with us as not only does it compress data more efficiently than algorithms used by various other file systems, but it also uncompresses data at speeds which are higher than the hard disk drive reading speeds. This can be done by using a lot of CPU processing time, which is not a problem for our platform because it uses clusters of powerful servers working together. A further advantage of LZ4 is that it enables us to generate backup copies more rapidly and on less disk space, so we will have a couple of daily backups of your files and databases and their generation will not change the performance of the servers. In this way, we can always restore any kind of content that you could have erased by mistake.

Data Compression in Semi-dedicated Servers

Your semi-dedicated server account shall be created on a cloud platform that is run on the innovative ZFS file system. The aforementioned uses a compression algorithm named LZ4, that's a lot better than other algorithms with regard to compression ratio and speed. The gain is noticeable especially when data is being uncompressed and not only is LZ4 quicker than other algorithms, but it is also quicker in uncompressing data than a system is in reading from a HDD. That is why Internet sites running on a platform which employs LZ4 compression perform better because the algorithm is most effective when it processes compressible data i.e. website content. One more advantage of using LZ4 is that the backups of the semi-dedicated accounts that we keep take much less space and are generated a lot quicker, which allows us to store a couple of daily backups of all your files and databases.